Armor

Today I will be discussing armor, the first of four forms of mitigation I plan to post about. Each of these mitigations will have their own pro’s and con’s. Armor is used usually with life-based characters because armor and life nodes can usually be found close together. It can also be used with block to make full use of shields which many armor builds use.

Armor is very forgiving to use. It works very well versus small hits but its effectiveness goes down as the damage of individual hits goes up.

Damage Reduction

Here is a list of damage mitigation effectiveness from the official Path of Exile Wiki.

To prevent one third of damage, you need armour 5 times the damage (e.g. 500 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent half of damage, you need armour 10 times the damage (e.g. 1000 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent two thirds of damage, you need armour 20 times the damage (e.g. 2000 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent three quarters of damage, you need armour 30 times the damage (e.g. 3000 Armour for 100 damage)

To prevent 90% of damage, you need armour 90 times the damage (e.g. 9000 Armour for 100 damage)

Armour will never prevent more damage than its value divided by 10 (e.g. 1000 Armour will never prevent more than 100 damage)

How to Scale

The best builds use flasks to boost their armour and can reach up to 70,000 armour. Paired with endurance charges these builds can reach up to 90% estimated physical damage mitigation. When building around armour you generally want to be in the marauder part of the passive tree. Most of the armour and life nodes are located there. There are also many unique items that boost your armour and other aspects of your build. Some examples are Kaom’s Heart, The Brass Dome, and many others. You need to think of your specific build and what pertains to you. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and come up with new ideas. The best builds are always outside the box. Voltaxic Poison Spark, Assassin Tornado Shot, Pathfinder Blade Vortex… the list goes on and on.